The Walking Dead Comes Alive

On Sunday evening I, along with every-fucking-body in the world, watched the AMC premiere of The Walking Dead. The small screen adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s comic hit was everything you would expect out of a TV show helmed by Frank Darabont. It’s like Boardwalk Empire over at HBO. Did anyone expect a show masterminded by Martin mothereffing Scorcese to not knock it out of the park? The same principle applies to The Walking Dead, as it’s a masterful translation, with the finely tuned raw grit that made The Mist so gutwrenching back on display here. The man has a well developed sense of what makes horror scenarios so intense. The zombies themselves here, which are really some top of the line practical effects by the way, aren’t what’s scary. It’s the sense of overwhelming change. The sense of loss. The sense of distrust between the survivors. Darabont slathers on that sort of attention to detail and gives us an unrelenting drama.

The show itself is obviously amazing, but the turnout for the show is what is truly spectacular. It garnered the highest ratings for a cable premiere this year and it’s the best debut AMC has ever had. Don Draper can go suck a veiny zombie dong because The Walking Dead is a certified hit. In the weeks leading up to the event I figured that the comic nerds of the world would tune in, but I wasn’t sure it would find a mainstream audience, what with the fact that the previews that AMC was running for the show didn’t really show off much beyond it being a generic zombie apocalypse drama. But it looks like we’ll be getting a long healthy run for the series and I’m hoping that it will make it long enough to get to the prison arc. If the conclusion to that particular story doesn’t make for some of the best TV on record I’ll eat my hat.

And for those of you wondering, the reason I used the above image is because I wanted to see if anyone noticed the corgi in a lobster costume someone photoshopped in.